VJ Um Amel
Arabic for Video Jockey (VJ) "Mother of Hope"
Known for creating R-Shief software and performing as VJ Um Amel, Laila Shereen Sakr is a professor and artist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She works at the intersection of creative, critical AI, digital arts, and Middle East Studies. In 2021, she launched VJ.Live, a platform for live broadcasting and interactive experiences. She is a Public Voices Fellow of the OpEd Project.
- Digital Arts
- Media Theory + Practice
- Feminist Technology
- Middle East Studies
- Interaction Design
- Worldbuilding
Featured Video
Reviews
All Reviews
Review in UCSB's The Current
"From blood, water and wax to pastel, oil and polymers, artists make work from the materials of their time. For digital artist Laila Shereen Sakr that means using data like clay."
Book Review in Italian Digital Arts Journal
"The glitch practise she proposes thus becomes a methodology of awareness and liberation that draws on history and art practise and must be social, as the code should." - Thank you, Neural, for the book review ❤️
Book Review in Journal of Cyber Policy
Google alerted me to a new citation: Jessica Mclearn's book review was published online in the Journal of Cyber Policy on July 18, 2024. It is open access.
Reviewed in Danish news, Globalynt
Thank you for the lovely interview in "Glem Silicon Valley. Avantgarden for tech-til-forandring taler arabisk" (February 2, 2024).
Podcast on New Books in Middle East Studies Series
"Laila Shereen Sakr, ‘Arabic Glitch: Technoculture, Data Bodies, and Archives’ (Stanford UP, 2023)" New Books in Middle East Studies, December 18, 2023.
Book Review in German Online Journal: Rezension ‘Arabic Glitch: Technoculture, Data Bodies, and Archives’" dis:orient, October 6, 2023
Mende, Tugrul. "Rezension ‘Arabic Glitch: Technoculture, Data Bodies, and Archives’" dis:orient, October 6, 2023.
Laila Shereen Sakr, Arabic Glitch: Technoculture, Data Bodies, and Archives (New Texts Out Now)
Interview: "Laila Shereen Sakr, Arabic Glitch: Technoculture, Data Bodies, and Archives (New Texts Out Now)" Jadaliyya, September 21, 2023.
The Arab World, the real Silicon Valley? MEMO in Conversation with Laila Shereen Sakr
Thank you for the interview with London's Middle East Monitor, August 23, 2023.
Digital Activism in the Arab World
Thank you, Afikra, for the invigorating conversation with Mikey Muhanna on “The Arabic World and the Digital Age,” episode 357, 2 August 2023.
News & Events
Publications
See a full list of publications here
- Arabic Glitch: Technoculture, Data Bodies, and Archives
Arabic Glitch: Technoculture, Data Bodies, and Archives. Stanford University Press, 2023.
- Reframing the ‘Arab Spring’
Reframing the ‘Arab Spring.’ In Angela Krewan and Alena Strohmaier, editors, Media and Spatial Knowledge in/of the MENA-region. Amsterdam University Press, 2021.
- Techies on the Ground: Revisiting Egypt 2011
"Techies on the Ground: Revisiting Egypt 2011," Cyber Orient Online Journal of the Virtual Middle East and Islamic World Vol. 13, Iss.1, 2019, pp. 43-61.
- Ev-Ent-Anglement: Reflexively Extending Engagement By Way of Technology
“Ev-Ent-Anglement: Reflexively Extending Engagement By Way of Technology” (co-authored with Alex Juhasz and Brian Getnick) in Bodies of Information: Feminist Debates in Digital Humanities, Eds. Liz Losh and Jacqueline Wernimont, 2017.